I like basketball, but I think there's a flaw in the way the game's designed. The rules and strategies employed by teams often combine to turn a game played at lightening speed for 46 minutes into something that moves at glacial pace during the final two minutes. Many times, the more hotly contested a basketball game is, the more tedious it becomes down the stretch.

After the Sabres game, the entire TV audience decided to go out for a beer together, and we talked about how the opposite is true in hockey. For example, the Hurricanes' desperate efforts to score a tying goal turned the last two minutes of yesterday's game into a frenzy of non-stop action. That's the way it almost always is in the NHL, but especially in the playoffs.

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I've played both hockey and basketball (I've currently recovering from shoulder surgery due to a injury in intramural ice hockey - so right now I play neither) but I can't get into televised hockey.

I'm not sure why, I love playing it and I love watching it live, but on TV... meh.

Basketball I could watch anytime and anywhere (not the WNBA of course) and I love the final minutes. I love the chess matches, the coaches drawing up plays (like last nights inbounds play to Boris Diaw, what a call!). I also enjoy the dumbass plays that coaches call (Daniel Ewing? Huh?).

Anways, most of my frieds bitch about how long the last two minutes of a NBA game takes, but I don't care.